RECORD Editorial: 1Ls should enjoy flyout week

Guess what, kids? We pranksters here at The RECORD are just like everybody else. Most of our editors are leaving rainy Cambridge for other locales next week, and they’ve spent the last several locked in scads of 20-minute talkathons. So the truth is, we don’t really have any pressing campus issues to gripe about. Sure, there probably are some, but our letters pages have been quiet for the past couple of weeks, so how would we know? Has our angst evaporated all of a sudden, or (as is more likely) is everybody simply too burned out to care?

We don’t mean to be cheeky. In fact, for 2Ls and 3Ls, the free week of almost all-expenses-paid vacation that is flyout week is another time not only to be thankful for our comfortable situations in life, but also to do a bit more of that all-consuming soul searching that many of us do all the time, but still never get enough of. Perhaps flyout week can be a time to improve the quality, if not the quantity, of our self-examination.

Flyout week leaves you a lot to think about. There are the obvious questions of location — can you really stand to live among the steel-and-glass towers of New York or Chicago, or the smog-infested suburban sprawl of D.C. or L.A.? — and there are the deeper, and always more difficult questions.

Many 2Ls who entered OCI for the first time this year swore they never would. Now those same people find themselves swearing that this is only for a summer, or that they’ll try to work for a few years to finance that dream job they have planned for later. But after a few weeks of putting on a suit, basking in a firm’s attention and enjoying all the attendant benefits — free meals, free flights and (come summertime) a huge paycheck — that old promise gets harder and harder to keep.

But enough of that. If you’ve made it this far (that is, through 1L year), without losing it, you ought to take this time to pat yourself on the back, thank yourself for a job well done, and remember that all that time you spent studying Civ Pro wasn’t totally for nought. Turns out those 1L grades really did matter, sort of.

As for the 1Ls — the school is yours. Maybe it’ll seem a little lonely around HLS while the 2Ls and 3Ls are gone. The Hark will be a veritable ghost town. The treadmills at Hemenway will actually be available — even during peak hours! Langdell will be a little less full, and the Office of Career Services will await the gathering storm leading up to December 1. One-Ls will actually be able to interact with each other without 2Ls and 3Ls sitting around ordering them to subcite or offering them advice, too.

OCS deserves to breathe its much-needed sigh of relief. As promised, the office has placed nearly 100 percent of those seeking positions. OCS Director Mark Weber’s “sunny platitudes” (as one RECORD writer opined) don’t look quite so much like hyperbole anymore. Indeed, despite a down economy, despite a world of pessimistic predictions, life at Harvard Law School — at least career-wise — still looks pretty good. For all their hard work — and for all their success — the OCS staff deserves students’ thanks.

After this free week of paid vacation wraps up, it’ll be back to the grind of classes (catching up, in many cases), activities and a slightly less glamorous lifestyle. And — we at The RECORD hope — back to writing us some letters.